Sometimes
by LegalAlien
Summary: A ficlet between First Date and Get it Done


Sometimes  
**Author**: LegalAlien  
**Rating:** PG (A few bad words)  
**Spoilers:** S7 First Date  
**Disclaimer:** All characters, situations, window dressing etc belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox and UPN…I am just borrowing them for a few hours of cheap entertainment.   
**Comments:** This is the first time I've ever posted a fic. It's very short. If you hate it, pleeease tell me, and I won't waste my time. It's set between First Date and Get it Done. email comments to LegalAlien@adelphia.net

Shaving your legs was one of those arduously human tasks that had bought that first guy who decided hairy legs were a bad thing, a one-way ticket to the Artic. In Buffy's mind anti-hair-growing power should have been part of the luxury edition Slayer package. If she could find some way to squeeze a leg wax into her schedule, the situation at hand might not resemble Giles trying to mow the lawn with that non-electric whirly thingy. Unfortunately, as it was, she hardly had time to go to the bathroom, much less leave the house for some non-Slayer related activity.

But, here she was, alone, for the moment, in the bathroom. As the sun grumbled and hit snooze again, even the adrenaline crazed teenagers had admitted defeat. Throughout the house, clusters of sleeping bags, pillows and blankets harbored the exhausted girls and something like a communal snore settled in the air ducts. Buffy kept imagining a long line of 'Zz's stretching towards the ceiling. Oh yeah, definitely getting enough sleep here. The only problem with being giddy-with-tiredness, besides Giles ringing denouncements of all giddiness and joy, was that it never seemed to leave. And when you start each morning giddy side up, pretty soon giddy was going straight away to crazy; and crazy: never good.

Buffy still wasn't quite sure what had led her to the bathroom in the first place. Sure, getting to sleep was becoming a bit of an issue, but there was no reason she couldn't just lay there and pretend. 'Cause, you know, playing with sharp objects was not necessarily of the good when you hadn't seen the far side of sleep in well over a week. Compared to the average broadsword, the Lady Bic II wasn't exactly on the list of most dangerous weapons, but sharp and pointy was still sharp and pointy.

The best part about shaving your legs was that it required very little thinking. She could sit here on a stool with her leg propped on the toilet and just let her mind wander. It was sort of like sleeping, except for, well, the lack of feeling rested afterwards. Plus, it was good because she could, in theory, sit here and think hard, pondering thoughts of no consequence about the First and still actually get something accomplished. Definitely a rarity where the First was concerned. Here they were, waiting for a battle looming in the not too distant future, with nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero and change to help them win.

She'd fought in so many battles and halted so many apocalypses she'd lost count, but there'd always being something to lead them to victory. Will : way and all that. But now...she wasn't much for defeatist thinking, but things were looking pretty grim. It's not like they were going to throw in the towel or anything. They'd fight the good fight, but this time they might really die trying.

Glancing down at her left knee, she noticed her disjointed musings had allowed her to miss a spot. Bending over the section, she heard a muffled crash from the kitchen followed by some choice words. Figured. The only other person up at this ungodly hour was the one thing she did not want to think about, especially at night, especially in the bathroom.

As her thoughts strayed, she felt a slicing pinprick of pain where she'd last held the razor. "Son of a bitch," she murmured. She washed the rest of the shaving gel off of her legs and tore a small square of toilet paper and stuck it on the wound. Now all she had to do was get to her bedroom at the other end of the hall without alerting a certain night creature to her awakened state, thus avoiding a conversation she was unprepared to have and you know, it really was 3 in the morning. But in the same way her eyes were always unwillingly drawn towards a gory accident on the interstate, she glanced down the stairs. He was, of course, standing at the foot, staring right back out her. Surprise fizzed behind his eyes, he hadn't heard her coming. Now they were trapped, in that strange place where looks were supposed to be meaningful, but no one really had a dictionary. "SAY. SOMETHING," her mind mouthed. Even in her head there was only lip-reading.

Apparently the lips outside of her brain had been moving as well, because Spike was looking at her, arched eyebrow in tow, with a classic "Huh?" written across his face. Why was it that whenever she wanted to have serious conversation with Spike, a large section of her brain could only produce nonsense words? It definitely didn't make things easier. She'd admitted she wanted him around, but she wasn't really ready to go beyond that yet. The look on his face was slowly changing from questioning to worry as the silence pulled taffy-like between them, snapping abruptly with her soft "Hey."

His face matched her soft greeting, and he paused, letting the ever-present cloud of I'm-not-worthy-ness engulf him for a moment. Blinking his eyes, he kicked his inner puppy and queried "What are you still doing up?"

"Oh, you know, maximizing my allotted bathroom time, pondering my immanent destruction, avoiding sleep and accompanying dreams of said destruction like the plague. Same old, same old. You?"

"Well, nighttime. Kind of my favorite time of the day still. Dreams?"

"Mostly involving the deaths of Potentials and the end of the world. Not the sort of stuff that makes you excited about closing your eyes."

"I know what you mean." And there he was, standing at the bottom of the stairs, reminding her that his eyes were very soulful now. Unfortunately, looking down into them was starting to make her neck hurt. She walked halfway down the stairs and sat on the middle step. Now it was time for the appropriately phrased questioning expressing concern towards each other. There were boundaries after all, and lines not made for crossing. What they liked to do was walk all the way up the lines then lean way over onto the other side. It was a good thing she'd always had really good balance.

He'd steered the conversation in this direction, now it was her turn. "How're you doing?" A seemingly innocuous question, and he could, if he wanted to, keep far away from lines and divisions with his answer. He was still not completely healed from his time on the Wheel of Torture. All he had to do was say something like "I'm back to full fighting strength" or "No permanent damage" or whatever.

But Spike was never about the easy answer anymore. "They're still there, when I sleep. I can ignore them most of the time when I'm up, doing something. Sometimes it sounds like a football riot in my head, but I don't feel so much like I'm being dragged along a graveled road anymore." He paused. "It's always quieter when you're around."

The subdued figure that was one step away from scuffing his boot on the bottom stair and starting to whimper was definitely a different Spike than she'd ever imagined. She loved that he was trying so hard. She loved that he had gotten the soul in the first place. She might even love him. But, he was incomplete. He had become a caricature of himself, and that wasn't something she'd wish on her worst enemy, much less Spike. Unless he planned on opening a can of Bad Ass anytime soon, he was going to be sucked further and further in the land of the broody and morose. And now was not the time to be full of broody.

So, she did what she could. She reached a hand down into that dark, tormented world. Their fingers tangled together and redrew certain lines, fleshing out diminished characters.

Somehow, her seat had gotten much closer to the bottom of the stairs in the past minute. Spike sat alongside her, stroking her fingers with his thumb, his eyes were elsewhere, but his back was straighter as he leaned against the wall. A single touch and she didn't have to lean quite so far over the line. She found her voice again. "I'm glad you're here."

His eyes turned towards her then, blue and adoring, but with a sparking fire that had been tamped down for nearly a year. It wasn't their time now, and with the way things were playing out, it might never be. Here was the Spike she knew, more soulful than James Brown and still able to kick your ass to next Tuesday. And here she was, leader of small band of Slayer-wannabes and not quite over being dead. All that talk about opposites attracting, and she wasn't quite sure it was still possible for someone to be the omega to her alpha, but Spike came pretty close. "I should go to bed. Sleepy or not, I have a date with REM in a seriously non-Michael Stipe way."

"Everybody hurts." He rolled his eyes.

"Sometimes." She glanced down at their bonded hands. "I'll talk to you in the morning." Standing up together, fingertips touching, she grazed the barest of kisses across his brow. As she turned and started up the stairs, she thought there might have another good reason for shaving her legs after all.


End file.
